Early beneficial application of MNT: clean water

from the motherhood-apple-pie-and-pure-water dept.
Pat Delany writes "A problem ahead for nanotechnology? The possible backlash from two groups, one the growing number of people mistrustful of science and the changes it brings, and the other bureaucratic institutions that might balk at funding a technological revolution with the ability to unseat them from their position of power. A solution? Turn nano development toward an early and obviously beneficial goal: the desalinization and purification of water, allowing us to use our abundance of saltwater and polluted water for agriculture and consumption…We, the folks at nanospot.com, offer this idea for the nanotechnology community to consider, and would like to help jumpstart such an effort…" Read More for the full post. Pat Delany writes "A problem ahead for nanotechnology? The possible backlash from two groups, one the growing number of people mistrustful of science and the changes it brings, and the other bureaucratic institutions that might balk at funding a technological revolution with the ability to unseat them from their position of power. A solution? Turn nano development toward an early and obviously beneficial goal: the desalinization and purification of water, allowing us to use our abundance of saltwater and polluted water for agriculture and consumption. Why this goal? According to UNDP.org, about 2 billion people already live in areas chronically short of drinking water, a figure guaranteed to rise with our losing combination of weather changes, population growth, third-world industrialization, and shrinking aquifiers. The desalinization processes we now have take huge amounts of energy to deliver relatively small amounts of useable water. Already rural China has seen riots over water rights and water taxes this summer, and the problem will only grow worse. Harnessing the nanotechnology revolution to create nano-machines to separate salt and pollutants from water would have clear and obvious benefits for all of humanity. It would go a long way toward preempting the "disbelievers – 'flat earth' types who fervently doubt the conclusions of science…[who] are staging a resurgence today, partly in reaction to the unparalleled role science plays in society. Disbelievers fear Big Science the way millennialists feared Y2K….."We're at a moment for a lot of things where skepticism becomes a dogma," says Michael Shermer, author of a book about the antiscience backlash, "Why People Believe Weird Things."" (Newsweek, August 28, 2000) Additionally, we're likely to face the problem of institutions and their bureaucracies balking at funding nanotechnology efforts once they realize that those efforts could lead to drastic change in their structures or their relevance. If nanoscientists are already solving a problem that threatens many people's existences, the powers-that-be just might have to see things differently. We, the folks at nanospot.com, offer this idea for the nanotechnology community to consider, and would like to help jumpstart such an effort by adding to our search list sites and academic papers containing information about instances where desalinization occurs naturally. We could use your help in pointing out any sites you're aware of that contain such information."